


New Haunts

by hackedsaw



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Fix-It, Flashbacks, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Trauma, adam is not ok, also dont worry your gay little hearts there will eventually be kissin i promise, or maybe not idk man, scott is kind of a dick but probably means well mostly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:53:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27139657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hackedsaw/pseuds/hackedsaw
Summary: After a mysterious rescue, Adam wakes up in the hospital with a disturbing revelation. When his desperate attempts to return to his normal life fail, he seeks out the only other person who could understand.
Relationships: Adam Faulkner-Stanheight/Lawrence Gordon
Comments: 21
Kudos: 33





	1. Changing Seasons

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first go at publishing a multi-chapter work! I will update the tags as I go because I have a vague outline but am partially just winging it to get myself back into a writing habit.
> 
> Starting the 30th, I'll be posting every Friday, so stay tuned. :P
> 
> As usual, comments are greatly appreciated and keep me goin'.
> 
> Feel free to hit me up on tumblr @hackedsaw.

“I’m probably dead.”

“ _Probably…”_

The two darks were indistinguishable now — whether his eyes were open or shut, Adam hadn’t the slightest fucking clue. He wasn’t even sure if he was blinking anymore, the cold of the slimy tile wall blending with the chill of his own skin, consuming him entirely until it felt like he was a part of the room. _The room he could die in,_ he remembered fondly, wheezing out a humorless laugh.

_“Dead…”_

“Shut up,” he croaked in response to his own echo, the echo that for a split second, he thought sounded like the other man who had dragged himself from the room minutes or hours or days before. The name escaped him, and the thought faded away.

The throbbing pain that began in his shoulder now radiated through his entire body, keeping him anchored to that rusty pipe as much as the heavy shackle around his ankle did. Pain, at this point, was all he could feel, and he could hardly remember what it was like to feel anything else. Cigarettes and friends and driving with the windows down at night all felt like things he’d imagined. A different life. The room he was in was his present, past, and without a doubt, the rest of his short future.

_“Shut… up…”_

He groaned in irritation, barely a noise but bone-rattlingly loud to him at the same time. He recognized that it was his own voice this time, again recalling that the first time he’d cried out into the dark questioning his own mortality, someone else had responded. In his fading consciousness, he wished he could remember the name of that someone more than anything, wracking his tired brain for the answer but coming up with nothing. But he remembered what his cellmate had sounded like — and every time his own ghostly cadence came back in the stranger’s replacement, he felt closer and closer to his own doom.

Adam knew he was definitely dead. There was no ‘probably’ about it — he was stuck in a corpse and waiting in line for Hell if he wasn’t already there. A vague memory of someone promising to save him, to get help, to come back, flitted through his mind for the briefest moment before leaving him again, alone and cold and covered in more than one person’s blood. This was it, and when he thought about it as the space around him somehow grew impossibly darker, it was probably the fate he deserved. He’d put himself here after all, even if he couldn’t quite remember how.

A beam of light pierced through the dark, and he waited.

—

A gasp ripped through Adam and his eyes shot open, no moldy porcelain cradling him and a distinct lack of cold water filling his lungs. His first instinct was to sit up, but he found himself unable to move. His aching body refused to do much of anything other than suck in air like it was running out. The fluorescent lights above sent a familiar panic through him, a sharp beeping growing faster in his ears as every intangible thought raced in and out of his mind — a gunshot, his own terrified screams, the crunching and scraping of a hacksaw ripping through flesh. When he blinked, he swore he saw a familiar pale face, spattered with blood and on death’s doorstep.

But it waslight and not the darkness that he’d come to accept as his tomb. There was no smell of decaying flesh or rancid toilet water or old plaster.

“Shit,” he rasped out, trying to steady his breathing and closing his eyes when he finally realized that he was in a hospital bed. “Shit, shit,” he breathed, slowly moving his shaking hands to his face, feeling the pull of the IV that had been stuck into him, looking at his own palms as if they were alien.

He didn’t know how he was alive. He didn’t know how he got here. The beeping slowed a bit, and he realized that it was his own heart monitor clicking away next to him, an audible representation of his own living, breathing state.

He exhaled steadily, shifting as much as possible though he swore he could hear his joints creaking from the effort. As he took in his surroundings and tried to calm down, he found himself having to fight off the urge to cry. He was in distress, lots of it, but it was nothing compared to the fear and agony from the night before — two nights back? Three? He couldn’t be sure how long it had been since he’d come to accept his own demise, and the relief was as sudden as it was overwhelming.

The rest of his environment gradually began to register as he grew more conscious — the muffled sound of voices in the hall, wheels rolling and shoes squeaking against linoleum. If he listened closely, he could’ve sworn he heard crying somewhere off in the distance. No tears were being shed for him, though. A far as anyone was concerned, he had retreated into his apartment days ago and would pop back onto the scene in no time at all, unharmed and unfazed.

He sighed and looked around the room, wishing the lights were a little less bright and the monitor was a little less loud. Sunlight was peaking through the curtains but he couldn’t tell if it was dawn or sunset. On a table near the window, a small gathering of cards stood in a neat little row and his eyebrows shot up, scoffing in surprise that even one person had acted that fast to leave him something.

He half expected to see the other man — the other _victim_ — across the room, assuming the kind notes and well wishes were for him and found himself wondering if he was in the hospital as well if he was still alive. Adam seemed to be the only patient in this room, though.

A remote sat on the table to his right, and with some effort, he managed to reach it, a dull pain humming in his shoulder. He pointed it at the TV mounted up in the corner before he froze.

It occurred to him that it was _too_ dull of a pain.

Adam paused and let the remote drop to his side, the noise and the light fading to the back of his mind as the gears slowly turned. He looked down at himself, reaching to his shoulder that he suddenly so vividly remembered being shot in after begging for his life. He remembered the look on the face of the man regretfully pulling the trigger. Lawrence, that was his name — Lawrence Gordon, the doctor.

He pulled the collar of the hospital gown aside, feeling a mixed sense of confusion and dread as he was met with scarred flesh. He blinked, then his eyes grew wide, and the beeping returned to the forefront with increasing speed. Fumbling for the remote, he clicked on the television, forcing himself up against the flattened, shitty hospital pillows and flipping through the channels.

A local news station featured an anchor he was unfamiliar with and didn’t care to know the name of, stiff voice droning on about some new something or other that was opening downtown. The information he was looking for, encased in a simple graphic at the bottom of the screen, was a reminder for the casually scatterbrained but a terrifying wakeup call for Adam. His mouth hung open and he suddenly felt like he was drowning, dropping the remote in his lap and barely registering the nurses entering the room.

—

The welcome sight of Scott’s same old car rolled up, engine sputtering and leaving a trail of dark smoke that probably warranted a visit to the mechanic. Before he could come to a full stop, Adam was yanking the passenger side door open and throwing his bag in — his mother had apparently dropped off some of his things at one point or another, leaving him something to wear other than a hospital gown. He plopped himself down in the seat and slammed the door, his friend looking at him with uncharacteristic silence and, if Adam looked at him dead on, almost concern.

“Back from the dead,” Scott finally said, voice softer than usual and full of wonder. Adam could practically hear the shit-eating grin that pulled onto the other man’s face when he spoke next, likely at the visual confirmation that Adam was, in fact, awake and alive. “Hell yeah, buddy. You look like shit though.”

“Just drive, man,” Adam mumbled, side eying his friend as they pulled out of the hospital. He fidgeted nervously, unsure how to act or what to say. “You got any cigarettes?”

The other man scoffed and slapped his hand against the glove box before reaching into the center console and tossing a lighter to Adam. The photographer eagerly opened the glove box, pulling out a pack of Marlboros and lighting one, inhaling deeply and closing his eyes.

“Ya think without one for eight months you’d try to stop, huh—”

“I’m willing to risk it,” Adam bit back, suddenly hit with another clear memory and the doctor’s voice ringing in his ears. He felt himself tensing in fear of an electric shock that never came before taking another long drag and rolling the window down, listening to the staticky unfamiliar rock song drift out of the radio, wondering what else he’d missed in the time that he was unconscious.

“What’ve you been up to?” Adam asked after a few moments of silence, eager to avoid talking about his own situation as much as possible. It felt wrongly casual, like talking about the weather with a gun held to his head. The other man laughed and that stupid grin was back on his face. Always happy to talk about himself.

“Signed to a big label in Cleveland,” his friend responded matter-of-factly, drumming his hands on the wheel as he took a sharp turn that prompted a loud honk from the car behind them. Adam’s eyebrows shot up, impressed.

“Shit, really?”

“No, not really,” Scott shook his head and looked at Adam as if he was stupid for believing him. The photographer rolled his eyes and returned his gaze to the passenger window, for once in his life thankful for the summer heat before he willfully shoved that feeling of gratitude away. Like hell would he give that motherfucker the satisfaction of making him _grateful to be alive_.

For the most part, the city looked the same— failing businesses and barred windows galore with a skyline of high-rise buildings and penthouses for the ones that got lucky. All the failures of late-stage capitalism and a society of exhausted zombies that didn’t have time to give a shit. Good ‘ol Grandpa Jigsaw could shove it, as far as he was concerned.

“Got a new girl,” Scott continued on, and Adam was happy to carry on with the casual conversation, looking back to his friend and away from the concrete wasteland. Anything to keep his mind from having to think about what he should do next.

“Sarah finally kick your ass?” He mused, a small smile pulling at his lips as he took another drag.

“Who?” Scott blinked, taking a moment to process before shaking his head and waving his hand dismissively. “Dude, no, I bailed on her in like, January.”

Adam’s smile faltered at that, and he realized there’d be no shortage of reminders that he’d been dead to the world for months. He hummed and nodded shortly, eyes drifting absently to the dashboard as he let Scott continue.

“This new chick, though…” he whistled, chuckling as if to congratulate himself. He shot Adam a glance and gestured at him vaguely. “She’s got a sister, ya know. A lot of girls dig the whole sad trauma-thing. Maybe you guys would hit it off.”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Adam mumbled, Scott laughing and thumping his friend on the shoulder.

“Takes one to know one,” Scott shot back with a laugh, then the two fell silent for a bit longer than was comfortable. “Hey, listen,” he carried on, sparing another look to his friend. “You can crash at my place ’til you get your shit figured out, alright? And don’t say I never did anything for ya.”

Adam looked to him, puzzled at first and turning it over in his head before it hit him. There was no way in hell his apartment was still _his apartment_ — the landlord had been looking for reasons to get him out of there for a while, and not paying rent for eight months was more than enough nails in the eviction coffin. Not that he would manage to get a wink of sleep there after being kidnapped in his own home, anyway. He nodded silently.

“I feel like I’ve been asleep for a fucking year,” Adam said, snuffing out the remaining filter in the center ashtray. Scott snorted at that, humor obvious in that it damn nearly _had_ been a year. “I barely got used to writing ‘2004’, now I’ve got like four months to get used to it being 2005. Bullshit.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Scott responded, looking at him seriously before that stupid grin was back on his face. “You have _six_ months.”

“Fuck you,” Adam glared at him, grabbing his bag and starting to roll up the window as Scott pulled into his driveway, noting that there were two other cars already there. “I want a drink.”

“Lucky you, buddy. Your timing’s great.” Scott killed the engine and hopped out of the car, walking backward toward the house and throwing his hands up. “House show tonight, motherfucker.”

—

Maybe it wasn’t the wisest decision to drink straight whiskey after nearly a year of nothing but whatever-the-hell glorified vitamin water the hospital had to pump into him to keep him alive. Adam didn’t really care, though, especially when he was five shots in and laughing like a maniac in Scott’s kitchen with the goal of getting so drunk that he would forget where and who he was. He was nearly getting to that point, too. His tolerance hadn’t been very high to begin with, and Scott had broken out the _good_ stuff tonight — call it a celebration.

Adam stumbled a bit, slamming the sixth shot glass down on the counter and throwing his fist up in a lazy cheer. Going shot for shot with their mutual friend Pete was his go-to, the much scrawnier man usually hitting his limit before Adam did, but this time Pete was well on his way to winning the unspoken last-man-standing competition.

A new voice entered the room, wading through his drunk brain before Adam recognized Scott's cocky laughter returning to the group. A heavy hand clamped down on Adam’s shoulder, and he felt himself wince involuntarily, the reason why leaving his mind as soon as it had entered.

“You still shooting?”

Adam blinked in confusion, looking to Pete when he snapped his fingers in front of his face and gestured to the box he’d placed on the counter. Adam looked down, swaying slightly and trying to process what it was his friends were asking.

“We figured your shit was like, impounded as evidence or something, bro,” Pete said, gesturing to the box again before scratching the back of his head. “Brandon’s cousin’s roommate knows this dude at this tech store, right? Sweet discount. This asshole was betting you wouldn’t wake up, but we saved up and got it for you.”

It clicked for Adam and he saw a flash illuminate a severed boar head and he could swear he heard himself scream. He didn’t, though, and Scott seemed to not notice the disturbance on the photographer’s face as he patted him on the back.

“Gotta get back into the swing of it, right? We’re on. Get my good side,” Scott grinned that stupid grin again and Adam watched him go, mouth hanging open slightly. He looked back down and the rest of the room faded around him, feeling like he was underwater, the voices of his friends sounding distant as a group of them continued to drink. He grabbed the box from the counter and slipped away, slinking around the corner and ascending the flight of stairs that would hopefully get him a moment to collect his thoughts.

He slammed the bathroom door shut behind him, locking it and sinking to the floor. The muffled sound of drums began to thump through the floor, a long strum of a guitar grating on his ears as Wrath of the Gods took the stage that was Scott’s basement.

“Fuck,” he breathed out, swallowing hard and feeling like his heart was going to pop out of his chest. It was just the alcohol, he thought, clouding his mind and making him needlessly paranoid. Needlessly angry. There was no reason he shouldn’t be able to go back to his regular routine — why wait any longer than his first day out of the hospital, right? Right.

He steadied himself and clawed at the box, tearing off the tape and pushing the plastic aside to look at the digital camera. He felt his stomach churn and he immediately tossed it aside, scrambling over to the toilet and hurling his guts into it, arms shaking as he gripped the lid to steady himself.

He heaved again and shot a look to the box on the floor, glaring at the inanimate object like it had wronged him directly and wiping the spit from his mouth. Scott would give him an earful the next day for ignoring his oh-so-simple request, but judging by the wailing and scream-singing drifting through the vents and through the door, Adam figured he was at least safe from his friend’s attitude for the time being.

His head lulled back toward the toilet bowl and the sour smell of his own vomit hit him, another involuntary wretch shaking through his body and the strain of it sending waves of pain radiating out from his shoulder. A sudden chill ran down his spine and he felt cold, trembling as the room spun around him.

It was too bright, suddenly. The smell of rotting blood came from nowhere, overpowering Adam as he looked up and was met with a concerning smear in the shape of a heart on the toilet tank. The familiar fluorescent lights _(had those been there before?)_ sent him into a panic, his heart racing and throat clenching shut as the wallpaper turned to tile, peeling away and revealing the room he’d thought he escaped.

A corpse stood in the center of the room, watching him, talking to him, a stranger deciding it was his job to take Adam’s life into his hands. He could hear the doctor screaming bloody murder for his family but couldn’t see him, an obscene amount of blood trailing across the floor and under the bathroom door into the hallway.

Adam couldn’t scream as the room grew dark, unable to identify the voice echoing _game over_ in his ears, the last words he thought he would ever hear.

“Adam!”

“Oh man, I _told you_ we should’ve taken it easy.”

“Dude, shut up. Hey, Adam!”

Adam startled and the room was back to normal, Scott kneeling in front of him. His cheek stung and he realized Scott had slapped him in the face, gazing around at the couple of his friends that were standing there, looking at him. There was a significant lack of blood on the floor now and no severed foot across the room that he half-expected to be there, buzzing fluorescence replaced with shitty dim lightbulbs and no formerly dead man in sight.

“You okay?” Scott asked him, sounding more annoyed than anything. Adam nodded and Scott helped him to his feet, patting him on the back and sending him out of the tiny bathroom. It was quiet now, and the photographer was unsure how much time had passed. He hoped that wouldn’t become a theme.

Adam shuffled down the stairs, kicking aside beer cans and making his way to the vacant ratty couch. He was out the second his head hit the cushion.


	2. Open Doors

If it was possible to wake up less graceful than he did coming out of an eight-month-long death nap, Adam had achieved it. He probably looked like he _was_ dead, twisted and splayed out with his mouth hanging open and what was either vomit or spit or both dried on his face. A light that made it feel like someone was shoving needles directly through his eyelids and into his brain barged its way through the curtains, interrupting his impressively uncomfortable sleep and dragging him back into consciousness against his will. He groaned miserably in pain and tried to cover his face, collecting all of his limbs from his half-on-the-floor state and curling up against the scratchy sofa — he should be grateful for sunlight after being plagued by nightmares that he’d already forgotten, but right now he wanted to knock the stupid ball of fire out of the sky. Who could forget hangovers?

He stayed there until the world stopped spinning and eventually managed to drag himself to his feet, shambling into the kitchen like the zombie he was. He didn’t know what time it was, but if he knew Scott as well as he thought he did, the wannabe rockstar and his roommates (whoever they were now) wouldn’t be anywhere near awake, which gave him plenty of time to be alone with his thoughts once the splitting pain in his head faded away. He bitterly dug through the mess for whatever he needed to make coffee, cursing to himself along the way as he dumped the old grounds from the basket and rinsed it halfheartedly before popping a filter in and getting a fresh batch going. There was a pack of cigarettes in the key bowl on the table and he helped himself to one, lighting it and taking a long drag as he leaned against the kitchen counter.

It felt wrong to be here, in a house with a hangover, brewing coffee like any other poor sack of shit getting ready for the morning commute. It was too ordinary, like he’d just slept in a bit too long and everything that happened to him was just a fucked up dream. The thought of going to therapy crossed his mind before he pushed it away, entertaining it only briefly before deciding he couldn’t afford it anyway.

He sighed heavily and ran a hand back through his hair, looking around the space that hadn’t changed much since the last time he had been there — post-party mess and all. The less than classy playboy calendar on the fridge, next to an array of saved show flyers and photos that Adam himself had taken, confirmed the time that had passed and squashed his stretch of a hope that it _had_ all been a dream. The clock on the stove, if it was right, told him it was nearly noon.

Finishing his cigarette, he watched the coffee drip at a slower pace than drying paint as it taunted his dire need for caffeine. He groaned in frustration and turned away, abandoning the pot for the time being to make his way to the bathroom upstairs with hopes that it wasn’t occupied by an unconscious drunk. That was a position he’d been pretty damn close to finding himself in the night before, and he was thankful it hadn’t panned out that way — waking up in Scott’s dirty old bathroom probably wouldn’t have gone over very well with his psyche.

Nudging the door open to peek inside and make sure the coast was clear, Adam stepped into the bathroom, consciously leaving the door open behind him and squinting in the dim-but-not-dim-enough light that threatened to worsen his headache. The walls didn’t turn to tile, though, and when he looked at the toilet, there was no heart-shaped finger paint.

Beyond the smudges and water spots, the mirror that he hadn’t acknowledged the night before finally gave him the good look at himself that he’d deliberately been avoiding, but the stranger he’d almost expected to see wasn’t there. Still, the subtle differences in his own appearance after all the time that had passed added up to just enough uncanniness to be unsettling. His hair was a bit longer than it was a day ago, and a layer of stubble had crept onto his face that shouldn’t have been there for at least a few more days. He could’ve sworn he just shaved.

Something about his own eyes seemed off, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint why as he stared himself down. He scoffed and shook his head at the thought that his “new perspective” of life just made him look a little bit sadder and a lot more disturbed — that kind of shit was for the movies, and his life was definitely no moody art film. He looked like shit because he’d practically drank himself into a second coma, plain and simple.

Deciding that Scott probably wouldn’t mind, he crouched down to dig through the cabinet for a can of shaving cream but paused when he spotted the camera box from the night before, still on the floor in the corner where he’d thrown it. A brief panic struck him but it didn’t do much other than piss him off — he swallowed the feeling, forcing it into the “Things I Won’t Acknowledge” section of his brain until further notice while it continued to prod at him and release the world’s ugliest moths into his stomach.

He cleaned up in a hurry and exited the bathroom, looking marginally better than how he felt, and left the camera behind.

—

Calling out halfheartedly that he was leaving, Adam slammed the door shut a little too hard behind him, squinting in the sunlight and turning his gaze to the sidewalk until the trees provided cover. Hoping like hell that his landlord had a single merciful bone in his body, his first order of business was to see if any of his stuff was saved. It was a stretch, and he knew it, but his place wasn’t far from Scott’s and after the worst of the hangover had passed he figured a walk wouldn’t hurt.

The few Halloween decorations Adam had started to see pop up a few days ago in early October were now replaced by fresh sidewalk chalk drawings. The autumn chill that he’d been complaining about last weekend had become a comfortable summer morning. The number of potholes in the street had at least tripled, and there were a few more empty lots than before — all little changes he’d slept through and wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. The gas station on the corner still seemed to be open, though, and a few kids were dropping their bikes and running into the video store that Adam frequented on the nights he wouldn’t be getting much rest.

His bad habit returned with a vengeance as he lit another cigarette, only highlighting the burn from the too-hot coffee he’d impatiently knocked back earlier. He found himself growing more and more anxious about the state of his previous living space — as much of a _shithole_ it had been, he wasn’t super keen on the idea of losing all of his belongings, but then again, worse things had happened to him. Pretty recently, at that.

He turned a corner after his fifth cigarette of the afternoon, and there it sat, a fresh coat of paint already chipping off of the bricks. He scoffed and flicked away the ash, wondering who the hell thought it was such a great idea to paint over _bricks_ anyway. Especially with such a fuck ugly beige.

He entered the building and stopped at the “office,” which was just a repurposed unit on the first floor with a long desk sectioning off a waiting area for residents who had the unfortunate task of confronting management about one thing or another. It all felt about the same as it did before -- just as run-down as the rest of the place, a consistent buzzing sound and the smell of stale smoke filling the air. A new fish tank sat in the corner to fancy it up a bit before the neglected creatures would eventually die of starvation. There was an entryway to a back room behind the counter that had always been and remained shut. Adam still wasn’t sure if the landlord actually lived there or not. 

The landlord, who Adam had always thought had maybe been in the mob when he was in his prime, was in the middle of a rather heated phone call but acknowledged Adam with what could only be called a sneer. Adam shoved his hands into his pockets, and blankly watched the fish swim in sad little circles as he waited.

The stocky man damn near slammed the phone onto the receiver, cursing under his breath, but Adam couldn’t quite parse out if it was directed at him or the caller. He felt the man’s eyes on him and looked up from the tank, offering a shit-eating smile and a small wave.

“Hey, Marty.”

“Don’t ‘hey’ me,” Marty spat, waving vaguely between Adam and the calendar on the wall next to him as Adam approached the counter. “You know how much of a pain in my ass you’ve been?”

“Ah, just like old times,” Adam sighed, wandering over and drumming his fingers on the counter. “Listen, I was wondering if—”

“You listen,” Marty interrupted him, returning to his work and scribbling something down in a notebook, periodically looking at Adam over his glasses. “If you want a new key, it’s gonna cost ya. How many times? How many times have you come in here tellin’ me you lost your key, huh?”

Adam stopped and blinked, brow creasing in confusion.

“Huh?”

“What do you mean, ‘huh’? Don’t play dumb, kid,” Marty grumbled and rolled his chair down the aisle of paperwork and clutter, pulling open a filing cabinet and rummaging through it. He returned with a key and slapped it down in front of Adam, pointing his pencil at him. “That’s comin’ out of your rent this month.”

“Woah, hold on,” Adam put a hand up, looking between Marty, the key, and back to Marty. There was no _way_ the guy hadn’t noticed he’d been gone, right? He laughed nervously and pointed to the calendar. “I haven’t been here in eight months.”

“So what? You think I keep tabs on when you go on vacation?”

“I’ve been in the hospital.”

“Cry me a river.”

“I haven’t been paying my bills?”

Marty paused and looked up at him, bushy eyebrows shooting up in surprise before simply shrugging and returning to his notes. “Well, your rent’s been gettin’ paid.”

“How?”

“A paper check, what do you mean ‘how'?” Marty bit out, and Adam could’ve sworn he heard him mumble ‘dipshit’ under his breath.

Adam took a moment, looking down in thought. Marty sighed and put his pencil down, crossing his arms as he regarded the photographer, and Adam figured he must’ve looked pretty genuinely stupid to earn his landlord’s pity for once.

“Some lady came in a while ago askin’ about you, since then they’ve been comin’ in the mail. Money’s money, I don’t really care how it gets paid,” he said and then cracked a smile. “You like your women older, huh?”

Adam pulled a disgusted face, and Marty laughed, the landlord gesturing to the key before waving his hand dismissively.

“Stop losin’ your damn key or I’m gonna double your rent.”

With a creak and a thud, the door swung shut behind Adam as he wandered out of the office like a lost toddler, equally as dumbfounded as he was relieved to have one of the puzzle pieces of his life back. It left a whole new set of questions for him to dig up the answers to, but for now, he settled on clutching the key in hand like it was his lifeline, hurrying down the hall and ascending the familiar grimy staircase.

The cat that used to come by nearly every day to scream at him for some kind of food — which had really been his own fault from the first day he’d given the scrawny thing his last bit of leftovers — was nowhere to be found when he reached his door. His hand hovered over the doorknob while he waited a moment, hoping for that bit of positivity from his former life to round the corner, but it never came. He took a deep breath and entered his apartment.

Adam immediately locked the door behind him and turned on the dim lights, a weight lifting off of his shoulders when the light switch functioned like it was supposed to. The little one-bedroom was about as cramped and stuffy as he remembered, heavy with summer mugginess that he’d typically fend off with open windows and as many fans as possible. Posters and photos were still plastered on the walls, odds and ends scattered around the space, not unlike the mess he left it. The smell of stale cigarettes and old furniture clung in the air, the familiar aroma of photo developer still lingering there from the other room. He dreaded opening the fridge before remembering that it was pretty empty to begin with and decided to save that problem for another day.

It all appeared untouched, except for the closet that was left swung open, empty hangers and negative space taunting him. He made quick work of shutting it, freezing with his hand on the doorknob, and giving it some thought before deciding that a closed door would leave too much to the imagination and opened it again. He decided at that moment that he wouldn’t tell Scott he hadn’t been evicted just yet.

He hesitated, turning over in his head just how much time he wanted to spend there before firmly telling himself this was _his_ shitty apartment and continued with the investigation of his own past life.

Beyond the closet, down the short hallway and into his bedroom, it was so comically unchanged that if it weren’t for the heat, he’d think it was still last fall. The world’s most uninteresting time capsule — clothes were still strewn here and there, sheets still unmade, abandoned projects collecting dust where he had left them long before his abduction. His pathetically thin wallet sat on the bedside table next to his answering machine and he snatched it up, checking inside to confirm that the money that had nearly cost him his life was still there. A six-hundred dollar near-death experience. At least he’d only been robbed figuratively.

Someone could die in this building and no one would know until the whole place smelled like a corpse.

The answering machine beeped and blinked steadily, persistently demanding his attention despite being forgotten for so long. His heart sank, and he was suddenly blindsided with guilt, remembering that the last time he’d played the single message on the machine, it had been from his mother asking him to call. Like every time before, he told himself he’d get back to her sooner or later — it was usually later, and even more often than that, never. She didn’t call often.

He wondered if she or anyone else would’ve cared if he had simply wasted away in that underground hellhole, and both of the possible answers to that question hurt.

Reluctantly pushing the button, his eyes widened when the automated voice chimed out _“one old message, nineteen new messages,”_ easily three times as high as that number had ever been. Why anyone other than his mom would want to check in on him was a mystery to him and he hoped to god it was an incredibly relentless telemarketer instead.

_“First new message,”_ the robotic voice continued, and Adam took a deep breath to prepare himself, shoving the wallet he forgot he was holding into his pocket. He sighed and closed his eyes when his mother’s voice came through. _“Adam, please give me a call when you get home from… wherever you are. You know you worry me. Alright, bye-bye — love you.”_

_Beep._

_“Second new message,”_ the machine continued. _“Hi honey, it’s Mom again. Still waiting to hear back. Don’t make me come down there!”_

Adam laughed softly to himself at that despite the rising tension in his gut.

_Beep._

_“Third new message,”_ the machine spoke, and Adam froze when what came next sounded like a strained sob. _“The police called today,”_ his mother said, voice wavering. _“Listen, I don’t know where you are, but… I just want to know you’re alright. Please give me a call. Please.”_

He got through about ten more of them before he had to stop. Nine of them were steadily worsening check-ins from his mother, and the odd one out was a strongly worded message from Scott demanding to know _“where the fuck he was and why he’d bailed on their shoot.”_

He sighed and turned away, his eyes fixing on the little room that he’d been avoiding looking at — the bathroom-darkroom hybrid, the project he remembered increasingly regretting ever since Scott drunkenly pissed in a tub of expensive chemicals. As terrible as his setup was, it had been his pride and joy for the first few months of its completion, and it had gotten the job done.

He steeled himself and closed the small distance between him and the room, poking his head in and flipping the lights on to illuminate it all in red. It was mostly the way he’d left it, little notes here and there, a discolored piece of paper with “CALL MOM?” scribbled on it driving home _that_ spike of guilt. The photos that he’d deemed worth saving — some he took himself, some he’d gotten elsewhere and just liked to keep around — still clung to the walls, chaotically decorating the area much like the rest of his apartment. Inspirational insurance that maybe someday his drive to run around with a camera because he _wanted to_ ,not because he had to, would return. His friends had never been too crazy about having a print of Che Guevara or a stupid picture of the group of them staring at them while they tried to do their business, though.

The clothespins dotting the lines that ran from wall to wall were noticeably empty. The photographer's latest project had been taken as an instrument in his and Lawrence’s “game,” and he felt his stomach sink at the thought, closing his eyes a bit longer than a standard blink when he felt his heart beat just a little faster in subdued terror. There would be no assailant in a pig mask waiting for him when he left the room, not this time, but the fear of it came to him as naturally as breathing.

The first time Adam had stepped into a darkroom, he had fallen in love instantly, and there was a long period where it was his comfort zone, the one place where he knew his shit and the one place he felt like he was worth something. He could spend a whole day or night in one, until the tones in that particular lighting felt more natural than the ones outside, until the smell of photo developer and fixative was just part of his essence. That love had faded away a long time ago, but he’d never imagined that his indifference would become dread.

He inhaled sharply, shaking it off and dragging his hands over his face. He could hear his own heartbeat, and the longer those red lightbulbs bore down on him the more abrasive it seemed to get, and he could only hope that he wouldn’t permanently associate it with a serial killer.

His eyes fell to the floor, and he was suddenly met with a face that sent an unidentifiable pang straight to his heart, unsure if it was fear or remorse or something else entirely. The last time he’d seen that face it was near-death, turning away after assuring Adam that he’d be okay, that both of them would be okay — he wondered how true that promise had been as he bent to pick up the forgotten photo that had apparently been left behind by Jigsaw.

Lawrence's photo was nothing special, just a simple blurry shot of the doctor getting into his car, not knowing he was being followed. He remembered taking it. At the time, he thought nothing of it and frankly didn’t care, but now he could see the humanity behind the picture and the more-than-apparent frustration and unhappiness in the doctor’s demeanor. He wasn’t just a nameless job anymore — they had been through some shit together.

It occurred to Adam suddenly that he wasn’t breathing and that the photo was blurry because his hands were shaking, denting the paper with the death grip he had on it. The room suddenly felt too small, the red lights flickering around him, and he saw more in the dark than he did in the light, heard the crunch of another man’s skull under the weight of his own hands and felt the warm blood spraying his face.

He swore he felt a hand wrap around his wrist and would’ve screamed if he didn’t feel like he was suffocating, dropping the photo and stumbling out of the little room. He hit the floor, scrambling backward until his back hit the wall, and a sob shook through him that had been fighting to escape since he woke up in the hospital the previous day. Frustration and pain and anger took over as tears that he couldn’t stop came flooding out of him, a build-up that he’d been trying his best to ignore finally breaking him and practically choking the life out of him.

He cursed and banged his fist against the floor, earning a muffled shout and a just as loud thud from the unit below, and he laughed bitterly. Taking a few shaky breaths, he let his head fall back against the wall and closed his eyes. He didn’t move until the screaming from the red light had faded away completely.

—

Scott and one of his roommates that Adam didn’t know were sat on the couch when he returned, some shitty sci-fi movie playing loudly on the TV. Scott spared Adam a glance when the door clicked shut, but the stranger was too busy taking the world’s longest bong hit to acknowledge him and Adam was honestly glad for it. He wasn’t exactly in the headspace to be making the greatest first impressions. He kicked his shoes off and dug through the grocery bag he was carrying for an unopened pack of cigarettes, sliding one out for himself before tossing it to Scott.

“Where you been?” Scott called out as Adam wandered into the kitchen.

“Needed some air,” Adam replied absently, stopping in the middle of the kitchen as if he forgot what he was doing. The television blared on in the background, and the place was still as messy as it was when he left. He dropped his bag on the counter and lit the much-needed smoke, bringing it to his lips and closing his eyes as he inhaled thankfully, hoping it would wash all the tension away. It didn’t.

“Some guys came by looking for you,” Scott said after some time and Adam’s eyes shot open, wracking his brain for who the fuck that could possibly be before poking his head back into the living room. He looked at Scott expectantly, his friend’s eyes glued to the TV to see the resolution of whatever monster battle was happening before he turned his attention to Adam again. The photographer waved his hand impatiently for him to continue before taking another drag from his vice. “Detectives or something.”

Adam paused to exhale, confusion striking him before realizing that, _of course_ , the police would want to talk to him — it only made sense. He nodded, Scott not really seeming to be waiting for his response anyway, and turned back into the kitchen. He wasn’t necessarily in the mindset for an interrogation.

After finishing his cigarette in silence, he snuffed it out in the ashtray and shoved his hands into his pockets. His fingertips met creased paper, and the reminder he’d left himself months ago finally served its purpose as his eyes fell to the receiver on the countertop. He stared at it, pondering his next move before calling into the other room.

“Can I use your phone?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow two fridays in a row thats a 100% success rate!!!
> 
> thanks for reading, i hope i've laid out enough interesting and intriguing m y s t e r y so you come back for chapter 3 <3
> 
> questions and comments of any kind are super appreciated as usual. find me on tumblr to cry about chainshipping (it'll gET THERE I SWEAR)


	3. Weak Signals

The moment Adam sat down, he immediately regretted not putting up more of a fight before agreeing to be there — not that he’d had much choice in the matter, anyway. The cold, almost clinical room and the harsh lights made it feel much like the interrogation that the investigators claimed it _wasn’t,_ shitty drip coffee from the break room doing little to wake him up or calm his nerves as he mentally paced, arms crossed and knee bouncing anxiously.

He wasn’t under arrest, they’d made that clear, and it wasn’t his first time at the police station. He’d had his fair share of delinquency when he was younger and more than enough experience dealing with cops — this was different, though. The man sitting in front of him wasn't a cop, but he was a fucking _FBI agent._

Special Agent Peter Strahm, as he’d introduced himself along with his partner Special Agent Lindsey Perez when the two had come knocking at Scott’s door at 8 o’clock in the goddamn morning, mirrored his posture with crossed arms and an unreadable expression. The door clicked open and the other agent, Perez, entered with a folder, shutting the door behind her and taking a seat next to her partner. Strahm nodded curtly to her in greeting before returning his gaze back to Adam, merely watching him for a moment before leaning forward, folding his hands on the metal table between them and giving him a less-than-warm smile.

“Alright, talk.”

  
Adam blinked and then laughed nervously. The familiar feeling of a black hole opening in his gut had been growing stronger since he arrived, and it occurred to him for the tenth time in the past hour that he was very, _very_ unprepared for this conversation.

  
“That’s pretty vague,” he muttered after a beat of silence, unsure of where he would even start. “I mean, I’m sure you guys have all the information you need already, anyway. You’re telling me that after almost a whole year of investigating this shit, you haven’t—”

  
“Jigsaw is dead,” Strahm interrupted as the smile that was barely on his face to begin with disappeared entirely. The photographer didn’t complete his thought, only looking between the two of them and waiting for something to click. The relief that those simple words gave him was plenty to ease his nerves a bit, though — before quickly being replaced by a sinking fear of the unknown.

  
“Alright,” he said, voice hitching in both annoyed and anxious curiosity. “Then why am I here?”

  
“John Kramer and his known apprentice are dead,” Perez clarified with a glance to her partner, voice firm but far more sympathetic than the other agent’s. Having an actual name to the killer gave Adam chills, only solidifying that a real, live, fucked up person had caused this. His eyes darted to the folder in front of her as Strahm reached for it.

“But the murders are still happening,” she continued, looking to Strahm as he leafed through the folder. “We suspect a third accomplice, or maybe more. Either way, we need all the information we can get, and you’re the last survivor that we haven’t spoken with. For obvious reasons.”

  
Adam shifted awkwardly in his seat, still not understanding how any of these developments had anything to do with him.

  
“Doctor Gordon gave us all the information he could, granted it’s been a while,” Strahm said. The simple mention of that name made Adam’s thoughts turn to static for a moment, and the photographer was suddenly far more alert. “We need to hear your recollection of what happened. Make sure things match up. It’s all pretty standard.”

  
Strahm eyed him for an uncomfortable few seconds before finally pulling something from the folder and laying it on the table in front of Adam — a photograph, washed out from hasty development, still smudged with dirt from the bathroom floor. The tightness in Adam’s chest grew, and the panic began to rise as he stared at it, Lawrence’s black and white form just a turn away from noticing that he was being watched.

  
“We were prepared to talk with you about this at the hospital…”

  
Another photo glided atop the first — another wave of guilt.

  
“But you were pretty quick to get out of there, huh?”

  
The Agent continued to throw down photos like he was dealing cards. Most Adam had taken and developed himself, with one outlier that had been shuffled into the batch — Zep Hindle, poking his head through the curtains from inside Lawrence’s apartment. He remembered seeing it, but he knew for a fact that he didn’t shoot it.

  
“You’re gonna give us your account of what went down in there,” Strahm continued on while Adam was frozen in place with his breath caught in his throat, eyes glued to the photographs that were taken months ago with unforeseen consequences. The agent paused and Adam thought the room was going to run out of oxygen. “Why you just happened to be taking these pictures of the only other two victims from that incident.”

  
Adam’s mouth felt dry all of a sudden, his eyes widening as it dawned on him that he could be in trouble here, somehow. He uncurled himself from his huddled posture and sat up, far more alert and far more worried about where this not-interrogation was going.

  
“Hold on, I— I had nothing to do with any of that whole set-up if that’s what you’re saying,” he said a bit too fast and a bit too high-pitched for his liking, looking between the two of them nervously.

  
“You tell me,” Agent Strahm’s voice raised in volume and intensity as he tossed another handful of pictures down on the table. “One of these guys barely made it out alive, the other one _isn’t_ alive — I’m sure you remember that.”

  
Adam’s blood ran cold at that, the memory of practically bashing Zep’s brains out of his head coming back to him in the worst way possible. Underneath the weight of it all, it didn’t occur to him to mention that he _hadn’t_ taken that particular photo — because, in the end, he may as well have. He hung his head and ran his hands through his hair, squeezing his eyes shut to try to keep it together. He needed nicotine, or a drink, or just to flat out not be there.

  
“And you didn’t even try to get out yourself. Were you expecting that you’d get help? Or did you just not cut it for this guy’s ‘cherish your life’ mantra?”

  
“I got fucking _shot!_ ” Adam yelled, flying out of the haze, eyes shooting back up to the investigators. Strahm looked furious. Perez was practically unreadable. Adam could barely keep his thoughts together, let alone begin to piece together “his account” with all of this being thrown in his face.

  
“Didn’t think he’d actually do it?” Strahm pressed on, eyes boring into him. That did it, though, feeling like a punch straight to the gut — no, Adam didn’t think Lawrence would shoot him. It never occurred to him that it would’ve been a possibility, that it was even on the table. He deflated, sitting back in his chair.

  
“No,” his voice broke, and he looked down toward the photos again. With a shaky breath, he reached for the coffee cup, if not for anything but to occupy himself with something else. Both agents’ eyes were on him, pressing and uncomfortable, burning holes through the meager defenses that he had.

  
“Take all the time you need,” the woman spoke up, and his tired eyes shot up to meet hers as she placed a gentle hand on the table in front of him. It did little to give him the warm fuzzy safe feeling he assumed she was going for, Adam knowing damn well that they were pulling the _good cop bad cop_ routine, and he was not at all thrilled about it. Perez looked down at the array of photographs before back to Adam. “Just start from the beginning. What were you doing when you took these photos?”

  
Adam stared at her in silence, holding onto the shitty little paper cup like a lifeline and trying to focus on the mild burn in his palms rather than the building dread. The room that had almost become his grave had carved a nice little spot for itself in his brain, and these two seemed pretty insistent on digging it up. He took a deep breath before speaking again, making every effort to keep his eyes off the photos.

  
“I got paid for it,” he said finally, meeting Strahm’s eyes as the agent watched him. Waiting for him to crack completely, no doubt. “No questions kind of deal — and it _wasn’t_ Jigsaw.”

  
“Who was it?” Perez asked.

  
“Some guy, a _cop,_ according to Lawre— Doctor Gordon.”

  
The agents looked at him expectantly, silently urging him to continue and he rolled his eyes as the frustration built.

  
“I don’t remember his name, but I guess he thought Doctor Gordon had something to do with all that shit. That’s why he hired me,” the photographer continued, anxiety increasing with every tick of the clock. “Look, I don’t even do that anymore if that’s what you wanna know.”

  
“Do _you_ think Doctor Gordon had something to do with it?” Strahm asked matter-of-factly, tilting his head.

  
Adam froze, staring at Strahm in shock for a moment before his eyes narrowed. “What? No, Jesus Christ, what kind of question is that?”

  
“That cop you’re talking about was David Tapp. He died that night, along with his partner— don’t you think that’s pretty convenient?” Strahm pressed on, raising his voice and leaning forward. Adam felt like his brain was being jerked back and forth. “Gordon’s penlight was on the scene of a murder. Doesn’t that raise a red flag?”

  
Adam laughed humorlessly in disbelief and sat up, looking between the investigators and the photos. “The guy was just cheating on his fuckin’ wife. He’s no killer—”

  
“ _John Kramer_ was his patient!” Strahm shouted and slammed his hand down on the table, pushing his chair out and standing up. “The other guy — that you killed — was an orderly at that hospital.”

  
“Lawrence wouldn’t—”

  
“All these connections, all people your buddy knew, all dead. The murders are still happening, so you tell me! Isn’t it _possible_ that—”

  
“No, it’s not! You weren’t fucking there!” Adam practically exploded, heart pounding so hard he thought it was going to jump out of his chest. “The guy cut his own fucking foot off, for Christ’s sake! Is this seriously the only shit theory you have going right now?”

  
Adam’s hands were shaking, hot coffee spilling onto his hands and the table before he set the cup down. He muttered a string of curses under his breath, crossing his arms tightly and casting his gaze across the room.

  
“Tell us what happened in that room, Adam,” Perez spoke again, and it did little to calm him down. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  
“It was— He called it a ‘game,’ but you probably already know that shit and just need me to tell you what I know for continuity or whatever, right?” He laughed bitterly, looking at the ceiling.

  
“‘He’ who?” Perez asked.

  
“Jigsaw, on the tape,” Adam said, closing his eyes and bringing his hands to his face for a moment before letting them fall to his lap. “It was a game, uh… There was this dead guy in the middle of the room, and I found these… hacksaws. Th-There was a gun— Lawrence was supposed to kill me or his wife and daughter would get wasted.”

  
“But he didn’t. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?” Strahm chimed in and the sound of his voice made Adam want to jump across the table and strangle him with his tie. He exhaled a shaky breath, doing what he could to keep his cool — the sooner he could leave, the better, and screaming at an FBI agent wasn’t a likely path to him getting out the door.

  
“Not really. He’s not a murderer,” Adam bit back with a conviction that even he didn’t expect, eyes darting to Strahm and narrowing. He looked back down to the photos before tearing his eyes away, focusing on scratching at a faint smudge on the table. “We, uh… Tried to figure it out before the clock ran out. Did everything we could up to that point. But, at the end there, he…”

  
Those terrifying moments flashed through his mind again, and he felt a tingling sensation in his shoulder, his arm damn near going numb in a way that he’d grown used to over the past days. The photographer closed his eyes for a moment, sighing in defeat. When he opened them again, his gaze was fixed on a picture of the doctor that had an annoyingly magnetic command over his attention.

  
“He did what he had to do,” he muttered, almost inaudibly.

  
“People do lots of things in situations like that,” Perez said after the three of them were silent for a moment. “Is that why you attacked Shepherd Hindle?”

  
Adam froze, then dropped his hands to his lap and looked between the two of them. He swallowed the lump in his throat, clenching and unclenching his hands.

  
“He was gonna, uh, shoot Lawrence,” he said, voice shaking as he cast his eyes downward again. Everything seemed far away, and the room suddenly felt bigger, but he did his best to ignore the growing pool of blood on the floor that he knew wasn’t actually there, the screams and the buzzing and the door rolling shut with a slam.

  
“The man who shot you,” Strahm chimed in, interrupting the cloud of thoughts, and Adam looked up at him with a blank expression. “Why?”

  
Adam thought that over, not understanding why that was even the slightest bit important or even a surprise. He couldn’t just let the guy kill Lawrence, not after everything that had happened. There had been no thought, only action. “What else was I supposed to do?”

  
“What happened next?” Perez asked him, leaving him to mull that question over on his own. He blinked slowly, taking a moment before nodding.

  
“After— Lawrence said he was going to get help, and after he left, I tried to find a key or something to get out of there because… I mean, he didn’t look like he was gonna make it himself,” Adam said, voicing the thoughts as they came and digesting them for probably the first time since waking up. “I think he was just trying to make me feel better. I don’t know why.”

  
“He seemed pretty concerned for you by the time the cops got to him,” Strahm spoke, sounding marginally calmer than he did moments ago. He clicked his pen against the table, watching Adam for a reaction. “Practically the first word out of the guy’s mouth when he could finally talk was your name. Good timing, too, because it sounded like you were really knocking on death’s door when they found you.”

  
Adam blinked, mouth moving for a moment but not forming words. He couldn’t shake the suspicious tone in the agent’s voice.

  
“Have you spoken with Doctor Gordon since you’ve been out of the hospital?” Perez asked, and Adam shot back to attention, pausing before shaking his head. Perez hummed and nodded, glancing at Strahm briefly in a silent exchange that Adam didn’t quite comprehend.

  
“Uh, I didn’t find a key, but I found a tape,” Adam said if not for anything but to break the silence, chewing at his lip and looking back down at the table. “I thought… I thought the guy was Jigsaw, but it turns out he was just another player, or whatever.”

  
He remembered that moment, the dawning realization that overcame him that he’d killed a somewhat innocent man. It hit him then again, making him feel ill, feeling the color drain from his face as he spoke.

  
“How the fuck could I have known that?” Adam’s eyes returned to the agents, voice cracking with fear and guilt. “He just came in there waving a gun, talking about the rules, ya know? How could I have—”

  
“We know,” Perez interrupted him softly, holding her hand up. “Originally, there were going to be charges of manslaughter, but… Well, it’s a unique case.”

  
Adam nodded and rubbed at his eyes, sighing heavily before continuing. “After that…” he swallowed hard, the terror of those moments coming back and hitting him like a truck. That dead body, standing up like it was a fucking Romero film, the single most terrifying thing he’s ever seen in his life that would probably ruin horror movies for him forever.

  
He wondered how much they even knew, how much Lawrence had known and what he had told them. After all, the doctor hadn’t seen what Adam had in those final moments, and Adam recalled the excruciating fear he’d felt at the time that Jigsaw would find Lawrence in the hall and finish the job. That would be it for both of them.

  
Game over.

  
“After that, what?” Strahm snapped, dragging Adam from his space-out. The photographer blinked and nodded again, rubbing his hands together and trying to organize his thoughts.

  
The agents continued to prod at him for an amount of time that he’d lost track of, blank walls and Agent Strahm’s watch that he couldn’t catch a glimpse of leaving him wondering if he’d been there for hours. It was details that they wanted — every single one, every word he could remember that was said. They may as well have asked him the fucking color of the goddamn walls.

  
He felt like his brain had been turned inside out, shut off and scraped out for any shred of information he might have. He knew he was speaking but didn’t hear the words or feel them leave his lips, recounting the worst day of his life in explicit detail for people who likely didn’t give a shit about his wellbeing.

  
“Are you grateful?” Perez asked him when he finished, and he wouldn’t have even heard the question if it wasn’t so jarring. He snapped back to reality, looking at the two of them in tense silence. Tears that had been threatening to escape manifested instead in the form of a bitter laugh.

  
“You’re kidding, right?” He said, shaking his head and gawking at the two of them in amazement. “No. I’m not.”

—

Adam declined the offer for a ride home in favor of a good long walk to clear his head, in addition to not having to share any more space with law enforcement. “Clearing his head,” however, just turned into more stewing in his own thoughts and practically walking into traffic at _several_ parts of town that he definitely remembered having crosswalks.

  
The talk did nothing but set him more on edge, open up more wounds and more questions he had for himself. In particular, the question of _why_ they were so insistent that Lawrence might be someone of suspicion — or himself, for that matter — was eating away at him, and he was growing more and more furious at the audacity of it all. If they’d seen the way the doctor lost his shit, they’d know he had nothing to do with any of it.

  
The urge to try to get in touch with the man, despite any emotional repercussions it might have, was only getting stronger by the day as Adam unraveled the tangled ball of his life, chasing after his invisible unending goal of _what the fuck to do_. That was always the question, though, wasn’t it?

  
He’d give him a call eventually — to thank him, at the very least. All he wanted to do for now, though, was to not think about that night.

  
As if the universe planned for him to never get any rest again, Scott and his company of three new faces cheered the moment Adam walked through the door, causing the photographer to jump in surprise. His friend of twenty plus years launched himself off the couch toward him, throwing an arm around his shoulders and turning him toward the rest of the group.

  
“This is the guy!” Scott beamed, holding up his beer. This was the most enthusiastic Adam had seen him since the night of his return, and he figured he was more than buzzed despite it being the middle of the day — clocks had never stopped Scott from getting fucked up before. 

  
“I was telling them about you, buddy,” Scott said, quieter and near Adam’s ear. The photographer laughed nervously, surveying the group.

  
“What about me?” Adam asked, his eyes flicking between Scott and the rest of them. They were staring with sick anticipation.

  
“How’d chatting with the pigs go?” Scott asked in favor of ignoring Adam’s question, shaking him a bit more aggressively than necessary. “Hope all the grisly details are fresh in your mind.”

  
“You could say that, yeah,” Adam mumbled, suddenly wishing that he’d just gotten arrested instead. The anxiety he’d been working to bottle up during his walk back to the house was worming its way free, and he was already trying to figure out how he was going to get out of this conversation as fast as physically possible. His mom had always asked him why he hung out with the most insensitive kinds of—

  
“Scott was tellin’ us how much of a pussy you were for not sucking it up and cutting your foot off like the other guy did,” the greasiest of the strangers on the couch jeered, laughing to himself and elbowing the guy next to him. The red that Adam saw was so bright that he couldn’t speak.

  
“Hey man, shut the fuck up!” Scott yelled, releasing Adam’s shoulders and taking a threatening lunge toward the couch. “Stop putting fuckin’ words in my mouth!”

  
“That’s exactly what you fuckin’ said, dude!” The other guy stood up and the two men continued arguing, shoving at each other and shouting nonsense as Adam looked on.

  
In record time, the noise was miles away and Adam’s head spun unpleasantly as the shit he was forced to relive over and over that day built up yet again. He’d never escape it, and maybe he _hadn’t_ escaped it — he was still in that room, waiting to die with reminder after reminder trying to wake him up. This was a pretty piss-poor form of escapism if he’d ever seen it, though.

  
He had tried. He remembered trying. After Lawrence was long gone and after his voice was hoarse and the tears were dry, and he was left with nothing but a crumpled corpse for company. He knew that severed limb was across the way in the dark, a testament to the possibility of what could have been his way out if he hadn’t broken the other hacksaw. The knife he’d found in Zep’s pocket was tempting, the toilet lid he’d crushed his head with even more so — but in the end, he couldn’t do it.

  
Lawrence could, but Lawrence had what Adam didn’t. Drive. Something to live and possibly die for. Something to return to.

  
Or maybe Adam just trusted that the doctor would keep his promise.

  
He’d lost track of how many times those memories came flooding back, invading his senses and pulling him from reality — if it was his reality. He wasn’t sure anymore. The sharp sounds of screaming and carnage were just as expected as the crickets he heard at night that hadn’t been out on the brisk fall night he’d followed Lawrence.

  
He couldn’t hear Scott or the no names over the haze in his thoughts, frozen in place like he might as well have been when he couldn’t do anything to stop Lawrence from sawing off his own fucking foot. And that _ringing_ — that cellphone, the backdrop of the whole shitshow, a timer with no definite number that was so close but just out of reach. He could still hear it, every chime pushing Lawrence closer to madness and himself deeper into helpless despair — it was louder now than it had been in previous days, and he realized he wasn’t imagining it.

  
“Could someone just answer their fucking phone?!” Adam shouted, clarity returning to him in a rush as the others in the room fell silent and looked at him. He could feel the sweat on his forehead, hands clammy where they were balled into fists at his side as he tried to steady his breathing.

  
Neither Scott nor the strangers said a thing, staring at him in near-comical confusion as Adam realized the ringing was coming from his own pocket.

  
Of course.

  
He slammed the front door shut behind him as he went back outside, trotting down the stairs and flipping the phone open.

  
“Hello?” He asked, probably sounding more agitated than he meant to — in all honesty, he was relieved that the caller was just getting him the hell out of that house. He held the phone up with his shoulder, shaky hands fumbling through his pockets before finally finding his already-sparse pack of the cheapest cigarettes money could buy.

  
“Adam?” A man’s voice crackled through the speaker, and any gratefulness for not having to be around Scott right then vanished. Adam froze for a moment after lighting his cigarette before readjusting to hold the phone with his hand, glancing over his shoulder to ensure no one was following him from the house. No one was, but he wasn’t exactly counting his blessings. “Hello?”

  
“Hey, yeah,” Adam replied hurriedly after realizing he hadn’t responded, walking further down the driveway. He took a long drag before pressing the palm of his hand against his forehead. He needed a fucking break or he was going to lose it.

  
“Your mother got your message yesterday. She tried to call back this morning, but no one answered,” the man continued, annoyance and disgust bleeding through the veil of to-the-pointedness that Adam’s stepfather had had for as long as the photographer could remember. His heart sank before he realized that it was probably for the best that Scott hadn’t answered his phone when his mom called. “Figured I’d see if your cell still worked. If you still had it.”

  
“Got it turned back on this morning,” Adam mumbled, walking a bit further before sitting down on the curb.

  
“And you couldn’t give your mother a call?” His stepfather said, sparking what Adam guessed would become yet another interrogation of the day. Two and a half. A new record.

  
“I tried—”

  
“She practically ran out of work when she got the call,” the man continued, sounding increasingly angry and not having any idea how big the shit pile he was adding to already was. Not that Adam thought he’d care. “We drove all the way down there — two hours — and you were off doing who knows what. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  
“Look, man, I—”

  
“After all she’s done for you.”

“I know—”

  
“What, were you out partying?”

  
“No—”

  
“Your poor excuse for a voicemail doesn’t count, eith—”

  
“Would you just shut the fuck up for a second?” Adam barked, a bit too loudly for the kids playing in the yard over. He gave the disgruntled mother a half-hearted apologetic wave before turning away again.

  
His stepfather said nothing, and Adam took a moment to breathe, closing his eyes and leaning forward in his hunched position on the curbside. It was far from the first time he’d snapped at him, but it was the first time the other man had actually stopped talking — for a moment, Adam thought he might’ve hung up.

  
“Sorry,” Adam grit out, trying to keep his voice from shaking. He took another grounding pull from his cigarette and continued. “I’ve— I’ve been dealing with a lot of shit, alright? You don’t even know.”

  
“I realize that,” his stepfather replied, voice softening only slightly but still loaded with that _I Know More Than You_ tone _._ Adam hissed a short laugh at that, doubtful that he actually had a shred of knowing what he was dealing with.

  
“I wanna talk to mom,” Adam said after a beat of silence between the two of them and after digging through his cluttered thoughts to remember why he’d called in the first place. He wanted — _needed_ — to thank her for making sure he didn’t lose his apartment, but like hell was he going to mention that now. “Is she there?”

  
“I think she’d rather speak to you in person,” the man replied, sounding almost taken aback that Adam would suggest talking to her on the phone. “We can drive down this weekend. I’m sure you’re available.”

  
Adam bit his tongue, fighting the urge to tell him where he could go. The less he said, the quicker this would be over.

  
“Alright,” he said flatly, sitting up straight and breathing out a sigh.

  
“I’ll talk to her and I’ll let you know when exactly,” his stepfather continued. Adam nodded only to himself, eyes fixed on a line of ants marching their way out of the sewer, feeling like a middle schooler getting scolded. “And make sure you actually plan to show up this time.”

  
The line went dead, and Adam grumbled in frustration, staving off the reflex to throw his phone across the street. Even after damn near dying, his family still gave him shit, his friends still treated him like shit, he still felt like shit.

  
Agent Perez asking him if he was "grateful" echoed in his mind, and he couldn’t fight the broken laugh that came with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for missing last week i was made of pure STRESS take the fact that these chapters are getting exponentially longer as an apology
> 
> i STRUGGLED with this one, i put a lot of time into writing the first scene because let me tell you writing an "interrogation" with scraps of a plotline like saw's is a TIME but i'm pretty happy with how this came out!
> 
> i know a lot of questions in this still need answered - all in due time! for now just enjoy adam's downward spiral
> 
> thanks for reading!!! comments and kudos appreciated more than you know <3
> 
> ps idk what my chapter titling trend is here but im keeping up the adjective plural noun thing i dunno anyway CHAPTER 4 NEXT WEEK


	4. Old Connections

The days leading up to a long-overdue reunion with his folks were agonizing. Sleepless nights and racing thoughts kept Adam in a limbo of doing next to nothing but staring at the ceiling of his shitty little bedroom, tracing the lines in the cracking plaster in a fruitless effort to distract from his thoughts. He’d decided pretty quickly that his own place was preferable to Scott’s — it was quiet, no one was asking him to retell the most awful night of his life at every chance they got, and even if going into the bathroom at night to piss gave him godawful flashbacks, it was still better than an overcrowded party house. Scott didn’t seem to get it, but maybe he just didn’t care.

The days were agonizing, yes — but they didn’t hold a candle to how he felt sitting in that fancy cafe, the one he took two separate busses to get to on the “nice” side of town that he’d agreed to meet his parents at. It was the kind of place that rich old people came to after church, or businessman held their lunchtime meetings at, bright and spacious with real flowers on every table and a live pianist on the weekends. He opted for a corner booth by the windows, tucked as far out of sight as possible.

True to Dale Faulkner fashion, Adam was right to assume that his stepfather had given him the wrong time to be there. Thirty minutes early. Like he didn’t _trust_ him. Maybe that was fair, with Adam’s track record for punctuality, but goddammit _,_ he was there at two o’clock on the fucking _dot_ and was left sitting for half an hour with the afternoon crowd of upper-class patrons that looked at him like he was a dog who’d just tracked mud all over the house. He could at least get a cup of coffee in him after a waiter came by, reminding him to order something or get out.

He looked up when the cutesy bells on the door jingled, as he had _every_ time it jingled, leg bouncing nervously under the table and fingers drumming against the weirdly-pristine coffee mug. He half expected it to be strangers again like it had been the past twenty times, and even though this was planned, the sight of his mom and stepdad made him feel like he’d swallowed a handful of rocks. He watched them, watched his mother politely talk with the host at the stand who’s customer service smile quickly turned to a poorly-masked, displeased “oh” — the older woman didn’t seem to notice as she followed the host’s gesture, eyes landing on Adam. It was a particular brand of bittersweetness that overtook him as her eyes seemed to light up before practically running toward her son.

Adam stood up once he shook off the shock (the _dread_ ), meeting her with a smile and a hug that was surprisingly bone-crushing from such a small lady. He let out an uncomfortable laugh as they stood there, neither saying anything and his mom making no move to let go any time soon. He really hoped she didn’t cry.

Helen Faulkner (previously Helen Stanheight) pulled back after what felt like ages, looking up to Adam, and he could confirm that yes, she had definitely been crying. He held her by the shoulders, feeling the guilt coursing through his veins like a bad drug, screaming at him with every cell in his body.

  
As much as it hurt, he’d meant it when he said he wanted to fix these mistakes — even if it had taken having a gun held on him to say it. A prying thought that maybe Jigsaw’s method had worked to some degree wriggled its way into his mind, daring Adam to consider it — he forced it away, but the ghost of that feeling still lingered in his aching chest.

  
_Adam_ was doing this. Not John Kramer.

  
“Hey, mom,” he said softly, smiling, and she hugged him again before the two sat down. After letting them have their moment, Dale approached, Adam and the older man merely nodding to each other in courteous acknowledgment.

  
There was an awkwardly long pause between the three of them, Adam’s eyes downcast as he absently tapped at the side of his now-empty coffee mug, his parents watching him across the table. It felt like high school, and he was about to get chewed out for some dumb shit that he _definitely_ did but would claim wholeheartedly that he hadn’t — but the elephant in the room _now_ was easily three tons bigger than any of them when he was a teenager, and this one was out for blood.

“It’s good to see you,” Helen finally spoke after what felt like ages. Adam looked up to meet her worry-ridden eyes, and it occurred to him that she probably felt like she was seeing a ghost. He wondered at what point she’d accepted his death that never came, if she ever had — he couldn’t imagine his return as anything more than an anticlimactic disappointment.

  
“You look _terrible_!” She continued, and Adam could only laugh, the familiarity of the woman he knew breaking through the tension in his gut. He smiled a little, unable to keep his eyes trained on either of them for too long as his gaze flitted between Helen and the tabletop.

  
“Beauty sleep kinda loses its effect after the first consecutive week, I think,” Adam said, and his mother let out a soft chuckle that warmed his heart. Despite being distant for so long, and despite a lot of that time being _before_ he’d fallen into an infection-induced coma, it was surprisingly easy to fall back into their regular back and forth. Almost like no time had passed at all.

  
Dale scoffed barely loud enough for it to be noticeable, just in time to remind Adam how much he felt like a total asshole. Right. Adam’s eyes darted to the man, hoping the complete loathing he had for him was evident in the half-second glare before a waiter came by that was significantly more polite now that there were _real_ adults at the table. Adam hated this part of town.

  
Dale and Helen’s voices droned on in the background of Adam’s thoughts as they ordered, leaving the photographer to uncomfortably tap his fingers against the edge of his mug and stare at the table in thought. He wanted more than anything for his stepfather to be very much _not_ there, wanted to talk to his mom alone, wanted to feel like he hadn’t lost whatever was left of their relationship.

It was pretty damn easy for Adam to navigate their stiff conversation in a way that avoided any mentions of Jigsaw, of that night, and even any mentions of his time in the hospital were few and far between. Even if they didn’t talk about it, though, it weighed on his mind heavily — the effort of _preparing_ to talk about it just in case, the careful planning of his words to not steer too close to mentioning it. Anything to not spark that conversation, or at least to put it off as long as possible.

  
He was checked out, running on the autopilot of avoidance and an occasional lie. All small talk and vague memories of “good times” or family events that he didn’t recall, Dale watching him like a hawk to make sure Adam didn’t misstep or say anything to upset his mother. As if _he_ was the only one in the world who cared about her.

  
He snapped out of his daze when Dale got up to use the restroom, watching him walk away as if to confirm that the man was _really_ leaving the room. He took a breath for what felt like the first time since they’d all sat down and immediately began thinking about how to say what he wanted to say as quickly as possible before the prick came back.

  
“Mom,” Adam said a few seconds after Dale turned the corner, keeping his eyes fixed on that wall for a moment before turning back to her. She was giving him the same look of wonder and disbelief and _relief_ that she had when they’d first sat down. The photographer sat back, finally able to relax a little bit now that it was just the two of them — but his thoughts remained racing as he tried to piece them together, debating with what to say first, what to say at all. It was so sad that it was almost funny, the fact that he’d get maybe ten minutes of a genuine conversation out of this. The clock was ticking.

  
“How’re you feeling, really?” Helen asked sincerely before he could begin to say anything else, tilting her head. Adam blinked slowly before laughing it off.

  
“I-I’m fine, Mom, really. I don’t have to lie about my feelings just because he’s at the table, ya know?” He said quickly, gesturing vaguely in the direction that his stepfather had gone before crossing his arms. This wasn’t what he wanted to talk about.

“I know that you don’t get along, is all,” Helen said, putting her hands up in a shrug before taking the final few bites of her pasta salad.

  
“That’s an understatement,” Adam mumbled with a roll of his eyes before catching his mother’s warning look. “What? C’mon, you know he hates my guts—”

  
“He doesn’t hate your guts, honey,” Helen interrupted, a tinge of irritation in her voice. Here it came. “He’s always thought you were a very sweet kid when you wanted to be.”

  
“Yeah, back before he found out I was a fucking ‘mutant,’ right?” Adam shot back, sounding far more bitter than he meant to, but not as bitter as he felt. His mother froze, and they held each other’s gaze for a bit, evident shock in her eyes that made Adam’s heart sink with guilt. Again.

  
“Don’t say that,” she said after a beat, shaking her head. “He never called you that.”

  
“He thinks it, though.”

  
“No, he doesn’t.”

  
“What name does he call me when I’m not around?” Adam watched his mother for a reaction before casting his gaze down to his vacant coffee mug. He hadn’t ordered food, despite his parent’s insistence on paying — he wasn’t going to be owing them more than he already did.

  
Helen didn’t respond to that, simply watching her son with a softness that he saw but didn’t feel. He didn’t know what she saw in that asshole, which he’d made a point of telling her several times too many — definitely enough times to have driven a spike smack in the middle of their relationship. His eyes flicked back to his mother a few times, her dejected state only making him feel worse.

  
“Mom,” he spoke after an uncomfortable silence. “I’m fine, really. Things have just been weird. I’m… adjusting.”

  
“Have you gone to therapy?” She asked. He was somehow relieved to talk about his mental state rather than his relationship with his stepfather. What a low bar.

  
“No,” he said quickly and with a dismissive laugh at the thought of it.

  
“Maybe you should,” she suggested firmly, setting her fork down and placing her hand on the table between them. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a lot like his interaction with the FBI agents from the other day.

  
“Yeah, well,” he started, scoffing and throwing his gaze toward the windows. “If you know of a fuckin’ Jigsaw Support Group, feel free to let me know.”

  
Helen was quiet for a moment and he turned his head at the sound of rustling, brow furrowing as the woman across from him dug through her purse. She took out a folded up, glossy piece of paper, unfurling it at the creases and sliding it across the table to him. Adam uncrossed his arms and straightened up to lean forward, holding the paper down against the table to keep it from folding in on itself again. He wondered how long it had been in her purse.

  
It was precisely what he’d said — a _Victims of Jigsaw_ support group. He laughed again, sitting back and looking at her in surprise before tiredly shaking his head.

  
“I was completely joking,” he muttered, pushing the pamphlet back toward her. He couldn’t help wondering, though, if Lawrence went to things like that — but there was no way in hell he was going to go sit in some circle and cry about his trauma to strangers. No thanks.

  
“Well, it wouldn’t hurt,” Helen responded, grumbling as she shoved the paper back into her purse. She sighed and drummed her fingers along her bag, clearly mulling something over in her head. Adam was sure that she knew as much as the police did, and the thought of it nearly made him sick.

  
“I’m your mother,” Helen continued after a bit of silence, watching Adam with a warmness that only she ever did. “You can always talk to me. About anything, okay?”

  
She wasn’t lying, but she sure as shit wasn’t telling the truth — he could talk to her about anything as long as it didn’t shed poor light on her husband. Adam felt the corner of his mouth twitch with a sneer and he met her gaze with a bitter laugh.

  
“Anything,” he started, voice seeping with sarcasm. He drummed his hands against the table and looked to the ceiling in thought before back to her. The anger bubbled up, and he was sick to death of people trying to pry some novel story out of him. They didn’t get it. They couldn’t get it. “Sure, okay. What first, the part where I got fucking _shot_ or the part where I watched some guy hack off his own foot? Oh, I bet Jigsaw thinks I’m a _great kid when I wanna be—”_

  
“Adam—”

  
“You know I had to kill a guy?”

  
“Adam!”

  
They held each other’s gaze for a tense moment, and Adam caught the look of disbelief in her eyes before he looked away. He sighed and slumped back in the booth again, taking a deep breath and covering his face with his hands.

  
“I know what happened,” Helen said after a pause, sounding gentler than he was expecting following his little outburst. Given the circumstances, maybe she pitied him. He nodded and dropped his hands into his lap, looking at her tiredly, and noticed the beginning of what looked like tears in her eyes — but she kept it together. “I heard it all, after the police spoke with that other man.”

  
Adam cast his eyes downward, rubbing his palms against his jeans before crossing his arms again. The details didn’t mean shit when no one else could have seen the blood, or heard the screams, or watched someone they barely knew come apart entirely in a way that made it feel like the world was ending — they weren’t there with him when he was crying on the floor in a puddle of his own blood.

  
“Sorry,” he muttered, letting out a shaky sigh and glancing back up toward her. “I just— I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“It’s okay,” she nodded, looking at him like she was sure she _did_ truly understand.

  
“You wanna help. I get it,” Adam continued after a beat, stretching a bit before leaning into the table again, arms crossed along the polished wood, hunched in on himself, defensive. He lowered his voice. “You’ve already done enough, okay? You don’t need to be my shrink, too.”

“Oh, please. It’s my job,” Helen rolled her eyes, the tension from moments before unwinding. She glanced up to offer the waiter a polite nod as he placed the check on the table.

  
“It’s not,” Adam said firmly, sighing at the look his mother gave him at that. He looked down a moment, thinking about how to say it without sounding completely and totally _pathetic_. He watched her sign the receipt for their bill, feeling guilty over a three-dollar cup of coffee. “I appreciate it, okay? You don’t need to keep paying my way, though.”

  
She paused to look at him before scoffing and sliding her credit card into the leather folder.

  
“I can pay for your drink, honey — and I _told_ you to get something to eat. You look like you haven’t had a bite in days,” she chided, gesturing toward him vaguely before sliding the check to the edge of the table.

“I’m not talking about that,” Adam bit out, frustration rising to the surface. He sighed and ducked his head down, scratching the back of his neck before raising his eyes back up to his mother's. “My apartment. I appreciate it, but I _got it_ now, okay? I’m figuring it out. So you don’t need to keep—”

  
“What’re you talking about?” Helen cut him off, one of her eyebrows quirking up. He blinked slowly back at her, sitting up a bit more.

  
“What do you mean, ‘what am I talking about’?” Adam asked dumbly, the confusion in his voice softening the impact of what he thought would escalate into another argument.

  
With the worst timing in the world, Dale came strolling back over to the table, looking between the two of them as he slid back into the booth. He casually replaced Helen’s card with his own, earning a half-hearted slap on the shoulder as the couple laughed. Cute.

  
“What’d I miss?” The older man asked, eyes fixed on Adam a good deal longer than the photographer would like. He shrugged and shook his head in response, Helen quickly chiming in about how great the food there was.

  
Shitty small talk ensued until they parted, Adam’s mind on a completely different plane of existence wondering what it would be like if he was some well-adjusted asshole talking about work and family and holidays over twenty-dollar pasta and sandwiches. Free of near-death experiences. Still, he made the promise to call more often after assuring his mom that he _didn’t_ need a ride home — and it was a promise he intended to actually keep.

  
A nagging question remained on his mind, though, and it stayed there while he waited anxiously at the bus stop, sucking down a cigarette like his life depended on it.

—

Adam had probably spent more time in his landlord’s makeshift office in the past week than he had in the entire previous two years he’d been living there, but this was serious business. He was going to get to the bottom of this stupid mystery even if the old man’s cologne-masked B.O. killed him. Or maybe the guy would just up and kill him himself, because with the daggers he was glaring at the photographer over the counter, it sure looked like he wanted to.

“This is resident services, right? Am I in the right place or did I just stumble into the orientation for a mafia?” Adam cracked a smile to Marty when the guy made no move to say or do anything, but it was quickly wiped away when the old man grumbled and turned back to his paperwork. If Adam were anything like his mother, he’d leave a scathing review of the place.

“Buzz off,” Marty grumbled with a wave of his hand. “You don’t owe me, you don’t gotta see me — and you could bet your ass I’d come to you first.”

Adam rolled his eye, holding onto the edge of the desk as he leaned back on his heels, exhaling dramatically before bringing his feet back to being firmly planted against the dirty linoleum.

“That’s kinda what this is about, man. I just have a question—”

  
“Alright, _man_ ,” Marty snapped back mockingly, slapping his pen down and looking up to Adam with the impatience of an elementary school bus driver two weeks out of anger management. The photographer had been there for less than five minutes, and he wasn’t sure what he’d done to earn the guy’s scorn already — maybe he was supposed to knock first. “If it gets you the hell out of my hair.”

  
“Can I see one of those checks?” Adam asked, and the way Marty’s eyes immediately narrowed made him feel like he’d just asked him to loan a thousand bucks.

  
The landlord stared at him, seemingly urging for more of an explanation with his ridiculous eyebrows. Adam drummed his hands on the counter, growing antsier the longer this shitty interaction continued.

  
“You have a file or something, right? In the books or whatever?” He continued, smile falling when he realized the landlord wasn’t going to let him out of this without him feeling more ashamed than he already did. “The… The rent.”

  
“Ah, the rent,” Marty repeated, nodding in fake thoughtfulness. Then the little mole of a man had the nerve to _laugh_ , shaking his head and rolling his squeaky chair down to the filing cabinet. Adam didn’t think he’d ever seen him stand up. “Right, of course. Isn’t your mommy paying it for ya?”

Adam groaned and rolled his eyes again, even though, _yeah,_ he did feel like a piece of shit about it. No need to rub it in. Marty returned to him, a smug look on his face as he made a show of adjusting his glasses and peaking through the file he’d grabbed.

  
“Must be nice,” the landlord added as he held out a document toward the photographer. Adam bit his tongue, wanting desperately to tell him to shove it but settling for snatching the paper out of his hand and quickly exiting the office.

  
The door swung shut behind him, and Adam sighed, leaning against the wall and nodding politely to the poor sap that was on his way in.

  
“Good luck,” he muttered under his breath, plucking the cigarette from behind his ear and lighting it with a practiced swiftness. He inhaled deeply and sighed out a puff of smoke, looking at the paper in his hand — eagerness and anxiety curdled together in his stomach. The increasingly smaller part of him _certain_ his mom had just been playing dumb was damn near microscopic now. He didn’t exactly know anyone with money, or anyone else who cared about him that much, and he doubted there had been some kind of charity going on for him while he was out cold.

  
He took another drag to steady his nerves before sucking it up and unfolding the paper, a scanned copy of the check as evidence that, yes, his rent for the month previous had been paid. He scoffed at the thought of even owning a checkbook, being more of a _cold hard cash_ man himself — not that he’d really had a different option given his most recent career choices.

  
The light overhead seemingly stopped flickering for a second, and Adam could’ve sworn the smoke froze in front of his eyes as he looked over the paper, brow furrowing in confusion, disbelief. He had yet to ever see the name in writing, for a half-second convinced that he was reading it wrong.

  
Alison Gordon.

  
Some kind of sinking feeling in his gut hit him hard, and before he could even consider what it might mean, he had to know _why_. Right now. His mind raced with the possibilities, but despite the lack of concrete information, he couldn’t shake the knee-jerk thought that it was something bad — maybe it was some kind of trick, maybe Lawrence’s wife was involved with Jigsaw all along and this was some kind of _bribe._ Or a _threat_. Maybe Lawrence was dead and this was some kind of guilt-fueled charity, or maybe it was the FBI playing some trick on him, or maybe, maybe, _maybe._

  
“Marty!” Adam called halfway through the process of slamming the door back open, eyes transfixed on the paper in his hands. The other unfortunate resident of their high-class estate gave Adam a scathing once-over but stepped aside nonetheless as the photographer returned to the counter, shaking the copy.

  
“Do you have this lady’s number?”

  
“I’m in an _appointment_ , you little shit. Maybe you should learn how to—”

  
“Can I _please_ have her number?”

  
Marty stared at him in disbelief before cackling, crossing his arms and shaking his head. Adam glanced to the other resident, Mr. Septum Piercing McNo-Name over there just _glaring_ at him. He had some kind of nerve.

  
“This is just sad,” Marty said, removing his glasses to rub at his eyes, breathing through the rest of his dry laughter. “You are some shitty kinda gigolo, kid.”

  
“That’s _not—”_ Adam grumbled, face turning red despite himself at the implication. Like it mattered. “That’s not what this is. You don’t get it. C’mon, what’s the number?”

  
“I don’t _have it,_ ” Marty hissed. He glared at Adam, pointing toward the door. “Now get the fuck out of here so I can deal with my _job_ , alright?!”

  
Adam glared right back, huffing and shoving the paper into his pocket. He gave the other tenant one last scornful look for no good reason before flipping Marty the bird and storming out of the office.

—

There was no way that the Gordons would have still been living in their old place, that was for sure — but it had been his only lead, and he knew where it was for reasons that he tried to forget about these days. He did his best to ignore the anxiety that was clamped around his lungs as he investigated, didn’t think about the fact that it felt like he was still holding that camera and was about to see Lawrence walk out of the building for the first time. 

  
After pestering some of his ex-cellmate’s ex-neighbors, and after some convincing that _yes, he was the guy on the news too,_ he finally had a real place to look and found himself hopping on one of the same exact busses from that morning. The photographer knew he’d overstayed his welcome on this side of town, but he couldn’t help the fact that the address he was given was just down the street from the cafe from that morning. Shit, it was a small world.

  
His nerves had gotten exponentially worse as he’d neared the place, folding the corners of the paper he’d gotten from Marty anxiously in his pocket and going through nearly an entire pack of cigarettes by the time he arrived. 

  
He stood in front of the building, finishing that last smoke as slowly as possible. It was smack in the middle of the downtown business district, fancy juice bars and Starbucks on every street, highly visible accommodations where no commotion would go unnoticed. By the looks of the callbox near the front door, the Gordons were safely nestled in an apartment on the thirty-first floor. He couldn’t blame them — but if it were him, and he had the money, he would’ve skipped town altogether.

  
He took a deep breath and pressed the button on the fancy little digital screen, after staring down the letters “A. GORDON” for a good minute. It emitted a pleasant-sounding elevator ding rather than the grating buzz he was expecting, and he could’ve laughed at how much he should’ve expected that — this was _rich people_ housing, after all.

  
Any semblance of a laugh was cut short by the voice coming through, clear as day and more crisp-sounding than a phone call.

  
_“Hello?”_ The woman’s voice came, soft and polite, distracted like she was in the middle of cooking dinner. It was probably that time, anyway — he’d lost track at this point, but the sun was still up. Adam froze for a beat before realizing that yes, he should probably say something to justify coming all the way over here. He bit his lip before pressing the button to speak.

“Uh, hi,” the photographer started, voice a bit higher than he’d meant for it to sound, before clearing his throat and pinching his eyes shut momentarily. “Mrs. Gordon?”

  
There was a pause on the other end and Adam was about ready to press the button again, stopping short when the woman continued. _“Alison, yes. Who is this?”_ She asked, suddenly far more snippy and as if she were almost expecting this. The preparation to dismiss him was practically seeping through the speaker.

  
“Adam,” the photographer said plainly, quickly adding on before releasing the button: “You know, from, uh… Yeah.”

  
He stood back, glancing to the door and up the building's neat brick wall before centering back on the speaker. He was suddenly very aware that his heart was trying to pound its way out of his chest, palms sweatier than the mild evening weather justified.

  
Adam wasn’t sure how long it was before the door made a loud clanking noise, jumping slightly at the unlock mechanism. The speaker box chimed again.

  
_“Come up.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been a while, but i'm back on it! as an update: expect a chapter every OTHER friday, starting today.
> 
> i warned ya this was a slow burn, but things are gonna start picking up. also i hope its not too nuanced to be obvious BUT YES adam is trans lmao
> 
> thanks for your patience. comments appreciated! as always, im also active on tumblr under the same username.


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